Balance
by The Misty Jewel
Summary: Jim ponders why Molly seems different; Is it because he grew to know her like a normal person, or something more? A short Jim and Molly oneshot.


**Balance**

She had compared herself to a mouse. A mouse that disappeared when nervous, whenever Sherlock was in the room. And for the most part, it fit, but it always bothered Jim.

A mouse _didn't_ fit her, not exactly, not with the precision that he had anticipated to come with her analogy, not the way he'd imagined. A mouse fit at first glance, but he looked closer, (It was his job to know the details, after all.) and she was wrong. A mouse didn't fit her. Not at all.

No, a mouse didn't. To Jim, Molly was like a deer, a doe, delicate, and fragile, and graceful too, but only when no one was looking, and when someone was, she blundered, just like a deer skittering to run from danger.

She was like a deer in the way she could blend so well into the background that everyone forgot she was there, just as a deer's coat mixed with the bark of trees in the forest until one could not discern between flesh and plant when it stood still.

She was a deer in her nervousness towards others, in the way she had to take time, lots of time, to know and trust someone. Like a doe in the way her hesitation so reminded him of a deer stepping in the snow of a wood, trying to keep quiet.

She was like a deer when she met him for _real_, too. Like a deer in the middle of the road, with an oncoming car headed it's way, it's muscles locked with terror, it's eyes wide with fear, trying to see, but unable to, because of the headlights that blinded it so from it's own death.

When deer were in that position, they knew something bad would happen. They didn't know _what_, just knew something bad.

_Exactly _like Molly. When she felt in danger, _her_ muscles locked, _her_ posture stiffened, she froze, unable to speak, or present herself like she usually would.

And exactly like the deer, Molly knew something bad would happen. She knew it. She didn't know what, but she knew eventually she would die.

Perhaps that day, when the deer froze in the road, the car would break in time. Just perhaps. And perhaps she would continue on her way, but there would be more cars, more roads to cross, more chances at death. It was a game.

He loved games, and he was the car, the car in the road, that could either break in time, or run into the deer. He would choose to keep going, to hit the deer, eventually, and she knew it. He knew she knew it.

But the deer wouldn't get hit this time. Or the next. No, oh no. He loved his games. He'd let the deer slip a few times, and then perhaps a grazing hit was in order if he got bored, and then he'd let her slip away again, make her feel safe again, until he came back with a vengeance, and the car never braked, never swerved off it's course, and the deer met the final destination that it had been wandering towards all these years.

It was a game, life was. The deer knew it, Jim knew it, everybody knew it, including Molly. It was only a matter of time until life got bored of her, and a new deer, a new doe, took her place in the world.

But the deer still fought it, just like Molly.

And oh, deer could _run_. They ran when danger came near, ran and ran and ran, and never stopped, that boundless grace leading them on, not even looking where they were going, and they'd be miles away in no time.

But Jim Moriarty was like a cat, and cats could run too. Cats could run, and cats could _pounce._ He imagined he was like a panther, or a snow leopard, playing with it's prey before eating it.

Was he a cat, though? Sometimes it didn't feel like it. Sometimes he felt like a cat, for sure, and he acted like a cat often, in the way he played games, and pounced and killed, and enjoyed it.

But sometimes he felt a bit like a crow, a bird that didn't do _anything at all_, and yet death seemed to follow in it's wake.

But most of the time, he felt like nothing, just blank, like a sheet of snow that hadn't been touched. He supposed that was why he loved the games he played so much; they filled up the blankness in his core with something, something close to excitement, if only for a miniscule moment.

And then he was blank again.

But the deer interrupted the blankness. Molly, with her hesitant ways, was just like a doe putting it's first step into the new snow, nervous and hesitant, and curious, and as the deer walked, the snow's first untouched surface went away.

Molly stopped the blank in him, stopped it cold. The hoof prints she left with her nervous gaite colored the blank white a bit different, dappling the blank and the cold nothing that Jim felt with it.

And after the first deer came out, tested the forest for predators, the rest of the animals came out as well, and the blankness of the snow was destroyed, turned into a collage of footprints and tracks, paths and alleys trampled into existence in the snow.

The deer started life in the forest, quietly, inconspicuously, without pride, or the ambition to do so when it first set out.

But it happened all the same. The blank in Jim was swallowed whole, filled with something, something people, ordinary people felt every day. Something called life.

And the deer, the blessed doe who brought it, eventually slipped away. Slipped away through her secrets paths in the ferns and brush, without even the glance of recognition.

She'd started it all, but she paid no mind to it. Just left, in indifference, but neither in haste nor reluctance.

The blessed doe, who began the day, who colored the emptiness in Jim with life and vibrant hues, who made it seem that perhaps blankness wasn't bad, not when you had something, someone to help paint a story on top of it.

And always, always she slipped away on her little paths in the thickets, in the valley, up the hill, over the crest of a ridge, and when he followed he could find nothing, not a trance, just the lingering life she left in her wake.

He was a crow in the way he left death behind.

She was a doe in the way she left life behind.

They balanced each other, and balance was key. Jim Moriarty lacked balance.

Sherlock had balance in the way he had John by his side. Knowledge balanced with Conscience.

And Jim needed to be like Sherlock. They were the same, after all. He needed someone to balance him, keep him steady, and then he would be a match for the detective.

Molly meant balance.

That was why the car never hit her, and never would. Not even the grazing hit he'd thought about. She was too important for that, too important to become another pawn in his schemes, too important to be another plaything to briefly relieve him of his boredom, before a sudden, violent end.

Black and White.

Good and Bad.

The Moon and Sun.

Heaven and Hell.

Knowledge and Conscience.

Life and Death.

Except Death was alone. Death still needed Life by his side, still needed the balance, still wanted the order it brang, even if he didn't know it.

And perhaps Life needed Death beside her as well. Who knew?

He needed balance.

_They_ needed balance.

_Everyone_ needed balance.

Life without Death would be painful, unnatural, and eventually a nightmare.

Death without Life was simply nothing.

But Life and Death were everything.

The thought whirled in Jim's head. _Balance, balance, balance, balance._

He needed a doe to bring life to his snowy forest. She needed a forest to bring life to.

He needed Life to continue after the Death he wrought. She needed Death to end the Life she brang.

They needed each other, or neither meant anything.

And together, they were everything.

Balance.

**A/N- Okay, so this just popped into my head, and so I wrote it. *Ashamed face* It's rather horrible, I think, but that's what you get when you decide to post a story you haven't even worked a day on!**

**I just love the untouched snow after a storm, and then I also love deer, especially the way they're so hesitant to step into my yard. :P And I figured they kinda go together. I don't go a winter without seeing both at least once.**

**Hope you enjoyed this silly oneshot. :P Reviews are love!**

**-Misty**


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